Are You Sick of the Return to Office/Remote Work Debate yet?

Is it Groundhog Day?

Do you know I've never seen that movie? It's a good metaphor for the current state. It feels like this RTO - remote work conversation just keeps circling and no one has the right answer. It honestly is a flash back to 2013 for me and a lot frustrating. But I do have a way to make it feel better. It's community called The Flexible Path.

RTO mandates are based in fear, control and an inability to handle ambiguity. I'm not a fan. Nothing undermines trust, respect and psychological safety than an ultimatum. I've lived it, I've studied it and written about this for years.

However, if your executive leadership team has decided to implement a mandate, it can feel really scary to protest this action. What are you risking? Not just your flexibility but possibly raises, bonuses, promotions, plum assignments or whatever else leadership feels they can comfortably use as a stick when carrots don't work.

In times of ambiguity, when it's uncertain what the best way forward is, it's important to focus on what you can control and when it doesn't feel safe to stand up and advocate for what you feel is best for yourself, your team and the company, the only thing you can do is shift focus and perspective to what you yourself need and want now and in the future. It's a long game. I learned long ago that power and influence is a dance - one step forward, two steps back. Clarity is a superpower. Foresight, scenario building, trend tracking are all tools futurists use to help us find the way forward and the best part is these can be adapted for individuals. Futurism is not just for corporations, governments and societies - it can be something you use just for you.

There is a reason I decided to call myself a hybrid/remote futurist 2 years ago. I knew this would come. Organizational change like this can be cyclical - it seems to be a 10 year cycle but the pandemic may have accelerated it. What is different now from my lived experience is the scale and the scope of distributed work. This is a global phenomenon now, not just a perk enjoyed by a tiny percentage of early adopters and advocates. The sheer number of people who have made it clear that flexibility is something they don't want to lose is incredible. I think it's exciting. The thing that's interesting is that workplace flexibility means something different to every single person.

Power in the Personal

What do you want? What will you want in the next 5-10 years? How will your life change? How will your work change? No one has perfect vision into the future but by imagining the personal, the specific, the day-to-day, you can set a course.

I've built a tool to help you do just that. It's called The Flexible Path Clarity Canvas .

I'll give you an example based on my own life. When my kids were little, I had a 2 hour commute each way and very limited family help. We experienced babysitting issues frequently. My husband started his own business in 2008 when our daughters were 3 and 1 because one of us needed to have flexibility to be able to leave during an emergency like no daycare. By 2012, it wasn't enough. I was only seeing my kids less than 2 hours a day and they were in school by that point. They needed help with homework, playdates, sports activities etc. Our needs had changed. We needed more flexibility.

There's an identity component to this that we often don't talk about (and gender roles but that's an entirely different article). I didn't want to be an absent mother. I wanted to be the default parent - the parent that did school drop offs, helped with homework, took the kids to the birthday parties and playdates. My husband is very good at caregiving and household work but he was trying to grow a business and sometimes chafed about always having to leave his work to attend to the kids. In his family, his mom was a professional babysitter and his dad made good money working for Sears Canada. It was almost as if our roles we reversed. Entrepreneurship always takes time to build and I was the stability. My parents were older - the same age as Keith's grandparents - and I'm an only child. We didn't want to move away from family - I've lived in the Town of Georgina since I was 18 months old and my husband moved here when he was 18. Our lives have always been build around family and this community.

In 2012, I talked my way into a work from home pilot. It was only one day a week but even then I could see this was the answer I needed. My first RTO mandate happened less than 2 months later. We lost it for all of 2013 but gradually started back in 2014 - 3 days at home at first, adding an extra day the year after. This arrangement got us through most of public school, eldercare, estate settlement issues etc. but in 2018, I had a huge accident. I didn't want to work in Toronto at all anymore, not even one day a week. I needed remote. My needs changed again.

Sometimes the need for change looks like a fully loaded, 2 car, massive cement truck that destroys your car and almost kills you, making 1 million people late for work before you take notice....

True story. If you are interested, you can read about it in this post.

The thing is, clarity about what you need can help you set a course for where you want to be even if you have no authority, no power and no influence in your company. Because you always have agency. You always have choice. But you need to ground your decisions in your own specific reality.

Clarity is the first challenge I built in The Flexible Path community. You won't be able to join the community until April 1, 2024 but I'm going to offer an asynchronous workshop to help you get clarity using your own stories, identity, foresight, trends and scenario.

Later today, I'll drop the full syllabus so you can see the full offering in The Flexible Path, a video explainer for how to use the Clarity Canvas and a few curated resources to ignite your imagination. This workshop will also include a 30 minute call with me so you can get my insights into your vision. Asynchronous with a dash of sync:) Advocating for flexibility can feel very lonely so the very least I can include is the offer of my heart, my eyes and my strategic brain on your stories.

The course will cost $197 US and will be delivered via email.

I'll update the link to the post once it's ready in the newsletter. If you are reading this in email, log into LinkedIn to get the updated newsletter.

You can also join the waitlist if you'd rather wait to have full access to The Flexible Path in April. Here's the link.

You can only accomplish so much in a short workshop. Community allows for much more - it's not just my experience, it's the shared context and generosity and knowledge of other members.

Oh, and did you notice the shiny new blue badge on my LinkedIn profile? That's right, I'm a LinkedIn Top Voice.

It's interesting to discover how this invite only program is perceived by others. It's designed to increase trust and credibility - I'm fascinated to find out if LinkedIn's endorsement of the quality of my content translates into anything worthwhile. My very own trust experiment:). Thank you to everyone who joins me in conversation. I like to say chatting is my superpower but chatting is much more fun with other people. It's kind of fun to have a badge that recognizes my voice, the reason I write (writing has a voice!), podcast and speak for a living.

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